They rolled in a red tangle.
And when they came to a stop they didn’t move at all.
But the blood did. Arson Pike’s blood washed Claire Ives, filling her wounds, and what she felt was the warmth of it, and the life in it.
The busted windshield had blinded her, but it seemed she could see clearer than ever now.
As her heart beat its last, and Arson’s did the same, everything Claire Ives saw was red.
Tate’s feet were cold.
He opened his eyes. Raindrops splashed his face. The gray sky had opened up, and thunder boomed, and lightning flashed.
Tate saw a vision. At least he thought it was a vision. An angel reaching down for him from above.
And then the angel tugged at Tate’s belt, and the lawman noticed that the angel didn’t have any trousers.
“Steal my pants and I’ll shoot you dead,” Tate said.
“Sweet Jesus!” John Wallace Johnson gasped. “You’re alive!”
“Yeah.” Tate sat up. “Now give me my belt.”
John Wallace Johnson turned sheepish, handing the belt to Tate. “I was going to use it for a tourniquet,” the kid explained. “You’re hit in the leg, you know.”
“How about my goddamn boots? What were you gonna use them for?”
John Wallace didn’t answer. Tate got to his feet and grabbed his boots. He looked up into the sky, and raindrops pelted his face, and he took a step and nearly toppled over.
“You ought to sit down, you know,” John Wallace Johnson said.
“Shut up,” Tate said. He took a couple more steps, and then a couple more, and pretty soon he was where he wanted to be.
The battered Ford lay on its side in the cornfield.
Arson Pike and Claire Ives lay in the road at Tate’s feet.
“They got what they deserved,” John Wallace Johnson said. He snatched a handkerchief from Arson Pike’s pocket and brushed Claire Ives’s bloody cheek with it.
“Souvenir,” he explained.
Tate glared at the young man, but the sound of sirens rose in the distance before he could tell John Wallace Johnson exactly what he thought of his souvenir.
Tate heard those sirens and thought of one thing and one tiling only.
Imogene. Damn. The little flapper had gone and done it. She really could ride a Harley.
A woman like that… well, she just had to be a real sweet slice of something. Tate closed his eyes and thought about it while warm summer rain washed his face.
‘You really ought to sit down,” John Wallace Johnson said. ‘You’re a mess.”
‘Yeah,” Tate said. “But I clean up real good.”
Then he turned his back on the dead bandits, and John Wallace Johnson shrugged and did the same, and together they started for the main road. The sky above held only clouds, and rain poured down on the corpses as they lay all alone in a twisted red tangle, their blood washing away in braided rivulets that left pale trails on dead flesh.
And when they were washed clean, the earth puddled darker than earth should.
COYOTES
I was out past the dump, digging a grave for a coyote, when I spotted the van with the naked Mexican chained to the bumper heading my way.
Nothing unusual about that. The van belonged to the border patrol. It didn’t take a college degree to figure that the Mex had crossed the line and got himself noticed by the wrong folks. And in a town like Amigo, that meant trouble served up plain and hot and plenty of it.
That’s trouble, pure western style.
I mopped sweat from my brow with a dirty bandana and watched the van bumping over the rutted dirt road. The tires kicked up dry rust-colored dust. What didn’t stick to the Mexican clouded the crisp blue horizon, hiding Amigo from view.
There wasn’t much to hide, really. Like my daddy used to say before he up and vanished, “Amigo’s a one- horse town, scratch the horse.”
Most folks like it that way, I guess. Around here we keep to ourselves, and the rest of the world doesn’t bother us much. Amigo isn’t exactly a tourist magnet. Oh, once in awhile we get some magazine writer or amateur historian who wants to know about the time Billy the Kid rode through. And every now and then some university kid shows up and drives around the desert for a week or two hunting after Native American artifacts and such. But historians and archaeologists are pretty harmless, as long as they don’t go poking their noses into places they don’t belong. The sheriff and his deputies — with a little help from the border patrol boys — are pretty good at making sure that doesn’t happen.
Other strangers are a little more persistent. Like the flying saucer nuts who want to dredge up those stories from the fifties. Now, I don’t like to stereotype, but in the case of these so-called UFOlogists, it’s hard not to. In my experience they’re generally male and overweight. They’re as familiar with talk radio as they are unfamiliar with personal hygiene. Around here we don’t cater to them much. Mostly, we just shoo ’em on to Roswell. That town likes tourists.
But back to the van and the Mexican. I leaned on my shovel and watched both come my way. There was no sense trying to look busy. When you’ve got a job like mine, it doesn’t matter if you’re good at it or not. Putting on some eager beaver act isn’t likely to impress anyone, especially not the hardcases who pull down checks from the border patrol.
Animal control, that’s my line. All kinds of animals, all kinds of problems.
Jesus, here I go. Off the point one more time, but we’ll just have to let that naked Mexican keep for another minute or two. I promise I’ll keep it short.
If Rover’s got rabies, I get the call. Rattlers nest under a house, my phone rings. Sure, it’s a long way from a big fuckin’ deal. But that’s not to say the job doesn’t have possibilities. Say we had an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease hereabouts. Then my job would be a mucho grande fuckin’ deal. If I did something like quarantine some cattle, something where a few dollars were involved, the good people of Amigo would show me some respect.
But it never comes to that. Things go on around Amigo the same way they’ve been going on for years. As for my job, I know my place. I like it that way. I deal in roadkill mostly. Like the coyote, or anything else that gets caught between a set of headlights on the highway. I shovel what’s left off the blacktop and bury it out by the dump.
I’ve shoveled up Chihuahuas and Gila monsters. Rattlers and French poodles. One time I even shoveled up a dead alligator… at least that’s what I think it was. It was big and blackish green and scaly. If it was a gator, I sure as hell can’t figure out how it ended up in New Mexico.
Doesn’t matter to me. I figured out a long time ago that there’s no use trying to figure out anything at all. You ask me, the best thing to do is mind your own business and stick to your job.
I try to take my own advice. I answer my telephone when it rings. I drive around a lot. And when I come across something dead, I shovel it up and bury it out past the dump.
Dead is dead. As long as it doesn’t move, I’m not squeamish. And if it does move… well, I carry a gun.
See, I hate to see things suffer. There’s no cause for it, really. That’s what bothered me about the naked Mexican. There’s no need to be cruel. Just watching him made my stomach do a little flip-flop. The way he trotted
